Gizmodo reader Erica wrote Steve Jobs an email asking why her iPhone 3G doesn’t get to do everything a newer iPhone can:
Hey Steve! I just upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS 4 and was really looking forward to setting a background on my home screen. Guess that’s not happening, but I’d like to know why.
See, I get why you don’t include multitasking. My iPhone gets pretty hot when certain apps run, couldn’t imagine how multitasking would fry my phone.
But the background thing, I don’t see how that would be memory intensive and/or battery draining. It doesn’t seem like that feature needs to be exclusive to the 3GS and 4G.
I hope this email finds you in good health.
Erica
Steve’s reply?
The icon animation with backgrounds didn’t perform well enough.
So basically our old iPhone 3G devices are too weak and pathetic to handle the pretty backgrounds of iOS 4. [Thanks, Erica!]
olearymo
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:12 AMwell, you know, desktop background are PRETTY ADVANCED. And apple only just invented them.
Shane
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:15 AMWorked okay when I had it jail broken? What’s the diff?
It should read “We want you to upgrade”
chris
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:17 AMbut but but…
Jailbreakers have been doing it for years just copy the damn code they use Steve
i think it’s command c command v on your Mac
Matt
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 10:10 PMThis upgrade was more of a huge step back. I ran a jailbreak for a solid year with a complete theme… Background, icons, page jumps etc etc. It was hugely faster than this os4 bs… Not to mention how many times it crashes daily.
Jamie Carl
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:30 AMAndroid. ‘nuf said.
shaun2k
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 4:40 PMYou can tell the new background animations are a little more intensive on the hardware… Sure they could have disabled that nice little effect, but then you’d all be whining about the fact you didnt have the animation. If you want it all, then buy a new freaking phone. Or just jailbreak already and STFU.
boc
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:33 AMSo it can handle the default black wallpaper but, as soon as you colour a pixel it slows down the device too much?
I think Steve doesn’t quite understand how screen rendering works …
matt
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:46 AMI agree, as it is the desktop LAGS even without backgrounds! just fyi, the 3G IS a slow P.O.S and you SHOULD upgrade! probably to android if this type of stuff bothers you. also fyi: graphics performance of the new iphone will probably be about the same as the 3G, seeing as how the increase in gpu power is not enough to offset the increase in resolution.
Matthew
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:47 AMEveryone knows its so you buy a new one.
Joel
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:50 AMI’m really not fussed that my iPhone 3G doesn’t get wallpapers. First of all, they’re wallpapers come on surely you can all live without that. Plus it’s time to upgrade anyway, unless you’re that set for a 3G most of you will be eligible for a free upgrade to the new iPhone anyway.
And there’s a difference between jailbreaking and Apple. Whether that excuse is true or not, Apple likes things to work as well as they can. The 3G struggles already so if wallpapers slow it half a percent more, why add to the already slow phone?
A lot of people seem very upset that their two year old phone can’t get a wallpaper that’s mostly covered by app icons anyway..
StopKiddingYourselves
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 11:55 AMLet’s all have a cry because our ancient iPhone 3G can’t do everything a 3GS or a 4 can do. Suck it up ladies and stop with the conspiracy theories. If it doesn’t perform 100%, Apple won’t release it… so you don’t get backgrounds – big deal. Buy yourself an iPhone4 and get over it…
boc
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 2:33 PMThe 3G is very slow. The thing is when it first came out it was just as slow. In other words, Apple knowingly release a slow product.
Stop kidding yourself if you think Apple won’t release flawed products.
Deathbomb
Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 10:36 PMLook, jailbreaking is worth it, skrew apple, they limit the iPhone and iPod touch too much anyway. They ban from the app store then it goes 2 cydia or installer. I was on 3.1.3 and had backgrounder and multifl0w and they worked fine. ON A 2G FOR PETES SAKE!!!!!!!!! Just jailbreak using redsn0w 0.9.5b5-5
dcash
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 12:03 PMMy first gen iphone ran backgrounds just fine, back in 2007. Its taken them 3 years to get it working?
Seriously, its stuff like this that sh*ts users, it may just be a background but if im going to follow all the sheep i at least want to make mine different to everyone elses.
If it wasnt for JB all of my iphones would of been pretty boring experiences, thankfully my android does pretty much everything without the JB.
Grayda
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 4:31 PMIt’s a shame Apple. Your hardware is superb, but your software and marketing practices are worse than Microsoft’s.
“Hi I’m a monopolizing PC”
“Me too! But if you tell anyone, I’ll sue you, bitch”
Jason
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 4:31 PMEach icon needs to render a drop shadow when you have a background in order to improve readability. Jailbreak solution never worried about this. With a black background, you can skip the piece of code that generates the shadow and consume less CPU/GPU cycles.
boc
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 2:39 PMA device that plays music, video, surfs the internet, has all sorts of apps and games but, when it comes to drop shadows? No dice.
Seriously, did you read what you wrote there?
Why do people make nonsense like this up?
BBJ
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 9:30 PMSteve Jobs “One of the main features of IPhone 4 is backgrounds .I’ve left out something that we rich people in Apple inc could have given you three years ago just to repackage it later , call it a completely revolutionary and sell it to you at the same high price.”
That why you don’t have backgrounds for IPhone 3g.
Pete
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 10:40 PMStrange, could have sworn I saw the background image on my 3G briefly when it reset to factory settings during the upgrade, then it disappeared when it starting restoring the backup/apps etc. Oh well
rich
Friday, June 25, 2010 at 7:50 PMCopy the System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/N82AP.plist file from the iPhone over to any local directory on your computer.
Edit so wallpaper and multitasking are
Done and working fine
Vallabh
Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 6:33 PMI think the bacground wallpaper and multitasking(if you could call it so!!) projected as a important update is silly IMHO….
and if you know the multitasking as it is called by apple isnt true multi tasking anyway. It just freezes the backgrounded app and calls it back in real time. As long as you arent a jerk will open 8 apps a time it shouldnt stress the hardware too much…
i own a iphone 3G and for the matter of fact it is more snappy with multitasking enabled. settings loads way faster from freeze…Honestly guys how many of us will want ipod to be in the background while listening to pandora…lift up the lazy finger and close the apps manually from time to time which you dont need to be in the background period.
atleast you have a choice to close the apps you need. Android doesnt give you that…
As far as background wallpaper goes…hmm enuf said. Jailbreak and have peace…
jarrod
Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 2:57 PMi was really upset when i couldnt put backgrounds on my iphone so then i found out and it is really easy and anyone can do it first thing
1 upgrade to the new firmware
2 download the new redsnow program for 4.0
3 get right firmware and download that
4 run redsn0w then untick cydia and tick gackground and multitask and battery
after done wait till reboot and then your iphone 3G should look alot like a 3Gs